Shōwa

Built in 1930 in Kyoto, the Aoki Family Residence Main House sets a stained-glass Western room at the street and a sukiya tatami wing behind. Registered 2014.

A mud-walled kura of just 13 square metres, the Aoki Family Residence Storehouse of 1930 faces the sukiya main house across a Kyoto courtyard. Registered in 2014.

A small tea house on Kaga Shotaro's Oyamazaki estate, its table-style tea seat doubling as a Buddhist chapel, opened only for seasonal tea gatherings.

A tiny teahouse on Kaga Shotaro's estate, a log-framed room projecting over a stone base set into the slope, a deft blend of West and Japan. Not normally open.

By the worship hall stands Amino Shrine's offering hall, an early-Showa building where offerings for the deities are prepared, plain but carefully made.

Wrapping around the main hall of Amino Shrine, this thirty-metre early-Showa openwork fence is solid below and latticed above, ringing the sacred inner ground.

Beside the approach to Amino Shrine stands its ablution pavilion, built in 1943 to mark the shrine's promotion to prefectural rank, open on all sides under a copper roof.

A short covered corridor linking the worship hall to the main hall of Amino Shrine, built around 1929. Its thin brackets and curved rafters show a delicate touch.

Spanning the Yura River in Ayabe, Kyoto, the Ayabe Ohashi Bridge is a 210-metre seven-span steel curved-chord Warren truss bridge completed in 1929. Designated a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005, it remains in active service as a road bridge and stands as a rare and beautiful example of early-Showa civil engineering.

A 1936 single-storey house in Kyoto's Shishigatani, half-timbered outside and fitted with joinery from a passenger liner. Built by Konoike-gumi; registered 2004.

Rising from the wooded foothills of Ayabe in northern Kyoto, Oomoto Mirokuden is a vast 789-tatami sanctuary completed in 1953 on the site of an earlier hall lost to wartime suppression. A registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan since 2014, its pillar-less interior, layered copper-shingled irimoya roof, and surrounding gardens make it one of the great twentieth-century religious buildings of Japan.

Kaga Shōtarō's Tudor half-timber former garage beneath Mount Tennōzan, registered as a Cultural Property and now operated as a free rest house by Kyoto Prefecture on the wooded grounds of Ōyamazaki Sansō.

Discover the Ogawa-ke Kitashirakawa Bettei Omotemon, a nationally registered tangible cultural property in Kyoto. Designed by renowned architect Fujii Koji with gardens by the legendary 7th-generation Ogawa Jihei (Ueji), this elegant early Showa-era gate embodies the finest of modern Japanese residential architecture.

Discover Kawashima Clinic, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Kyoto's Nakagyō Ward. Built in 1936 by Amerikaya, this wooden three-story clinic features a conical tower, half-timbered gable, French roof tiles, and ship-cabin interiors inspired by German castles.

Discover the Kansai Franco-Japanese Institute (Kansai Nichifutsu Gakkan), a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Kyoto designed by a disciple of Auguste Perret. Explore this elegant 1936 reinforced-concrete landmark where French culture meets Japanese tradition.

Completed in 1934 in the light sukiya taste, this single-story parlor is a quieter counterpart to the Kataoka family's formal shoin guest hall of the Taisho years.

Completed in 1928 as Kyoto's police headquarters, this concrete block pairs a flat tiled exterior with arches and stained glass at its entrance. Registered 2024.

A timber village office of 1929 at Kuchiono in Kyotango, built after the Kita-Tango earthquake, its walls ranged with band courses. Registered in 1999.

A small bank of 1927 facing Shichijo-dori in Kyoto, with tall arched windows, stone quoins and a Lombard band along the top of the wall. Registered in 2017.

The main house of Kyutei Omuro, a 1937 sukiya villa on Narabigaoka's slope in Kyoto. A Mount Fuji transom crowns rooms whose karin table mirrors the garden.